The Thirteenth Day (16 page)

‘It’s all right. It’s part of the plan.’

What plan?

I was furious. The old rat hadn’t discussed any plan in the council yesterday. Susharma and his Trigartas were supposed to find Arjuna and kill him over the course of the battle. By the looks of it, Susharma was challenging Arjuna directly. So now the Pandavas knew that we were targetting Arjuna as well. It appeared Drona had no faith in the element of surprise.

A murmur went up from behind. I looked. The Trigartas made their way to the front of the line ahead of Bhagadatta and my heart nearly stopped. Ten thousand soldiers, at least two thousand chariots. Dressed in white dhotis, armours painted hastily overnight in a dull, patchy white. Their eyebrows and the hair on their faces had been shaved off.

It would have been easier to paint a bull’s eye on them. In front of us stood more than ten thousand soldiers, handpicked to be killed by Arjuna, coloured for his convenience.

Susharma walked back to the lines with grim pride. He took his position at the head of the Trigartas and nodded at Drona, avoiding eye contact with any of us.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I looked back to find Kritavarma looking annoyed.

‘So it appears Guruji told Susharma to make a public act of it.’

‘Why didn’t he ask the council?’

Kritavarma shrugged.

‘That’s not all, you know.’ He nodded towards the white soldiers who looked like caricature ghosts. ‘They’re calling themselves Samsaptakas now.’

I blinked.

Samsaptakas—warriors bound by oath to slay an enemy or die on the battlefield. It meant that they could not return from the field until their target had been killed. If they were unsuccessful, they would kill themselves when the war was over.

Kritavarma continued, ‘Seems yesterday night they made funeral arrangements…bought firewood and kusa grass and wrote their final letters. Their couriers have been sent off with explicit instructions not to return. Their retainers and camp followers have also been paid in full and told to leave as soon as their master falls.’

Susharma had always seemed an intense man, and I had felt that yesterday’s act was more bravado to fire up the council than serve any practical purpose. Apparently not. Susharma was taking his role of Arjuna slayer very seriously. And he had doomed himself and his men on the way.

The conches sounded again. The Trigartas, or Samsaptakas now, charged ahead of our front line causing confusion in our ranks. In the distance I could make out Arjuna break off from the main force with a small contingent to meet them. As the Samsaptakas streamed out, I looked at Drona, whose expression was still blank. He looked at me and Kritavarma and then spoke to his charioteer. His chariot clattered noisily and thundered down the field at a charge. I should have left the old bastard to die. Instead, I nodded at Narasimha and followed Drona, trying to catch up. My Anga chariots started behind me in haste but managed to get in each other’s way and stopped.

Kritavarma rode parallel to me with his Yadava chariots behind him in a perfect line, not one hoof out of place.

I didn’t expect any less of them. They were Narayanis, after all—guardians of Dwaraka, perhaps the best individual fighting unit in the known world. They were picked from the best soldiers in the Yadava confederacy and personally trained for five harsh years. They wore yellow dhotis with dark blue armour and their breastplates were embossed with a plough, symbolic of their mastery over any kind of weaponry. It was rumoured the Narayanis could make a lethal weapon of straw and dust.

I looked back at my own ragged line of Anga chariots, now reassembling slowly, and sighed. Narasimha was good at the hacking and maiming parts of war, but he was no organizer of lines or keeper of discipline.

Drona’s chariot went full tilt into the Pandava lines. His Leopard Guard, on chariots today, shored up behind him. Together, they punched clean into the Pandava front with little resistance. I held back for the Narayanis and my own Angas to come, but it didn’t look like Drona needed our help.

His bow rose, changed direction and fired without a jerk in the motion. His awareness of the enemy was sublime. He swivelled from left to right, knowing exactly who was close enough to hit. And every arrow hit a target. Mostly on the head or in the face. After a few moments of confusion, the Pandava soldiers became aware of his intentions and a small circle cleared up around him as he pushed forward, looking for Yudhishthira. He was oblivious to his surroundings now, firing away mechanically, using his immense concentration to find his target.

I was reminded of a story I had heard about the Pandavas when they were children. Drona had given them an archery test. He had hidden a wooden parrot in the branches of a tree thick with foliage and asked them to aim for its eye. Before they took their shot, he asked them what they saw to which all of them said that they could see the parrot. Wrong answer. Drona didn’t let them take the shot. When Arjuna came up to take aim, he told Drona that he could see just the parrot’s eye and nothing else. This pleased the old man immensely. He had told them proudly that
that
was the kind of focus one needed to maintain on the battlefield.

Drona went deeper into the Pandava army supported by the Leopard Guard. Kritavarma and I came up behind them followed by our brigades, almost entirely untouched. Something was not right. We were pressing into the Pandavas far too quickly. The Pandava soldiers stood around us, making half-hearted attempts at attacking us and withdrawing just as suddenly.

It was too easy.

A trap.

As it struck me, I looked around for Kritavarma and desperately motioned my chariot towards him. A great commotion rose in the back. The Pandava infantry had come up from behind us, cutting us off from our main army, swallowing the eagle’s beak in their centre. Their foot soldiers now joined shields and marched slowly towards our chariots. In our hurry to pick out Yudhishthira, our chariots had left the infantry behind and now we were defenceless against their long spears. I looked around. Suyodhana and his elephants were fighting their way towards us, but they wouldn’t reach us in time. Kritavarma and the Narayanis were assembling in the midst of the confusion with serene calm while the Leopard Guards were taking great pains to shield Drona who was still looking blindly for Yudhishthira.

I had gotten separated from my Anga contingent so I joined Kritavarma and his Narayanis. He was at the centre of his troops, directing action, when I reached him. ‘It’s a trap. We’ll have to fight our way out.’

He replied without looking at me, ‘Without the old man?’

I saw Drona make his way still further into the Pandava army. Most of the Leopard Guard had been cut to pieces behind him. He was almost completely isolated but didn’t seem to care. A lost cause, if ever there was one.

‘We can’t help him. Let’s just go.’

Kritavarma was silent.

‘Have you seen him? He’s gone mad. He’s not going to listen to us,’ I hissed.

He looked uncertain. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘We don’t have time, Kritavarma!’

He nodded and barked a short order. The Narayanis came together beautifully. A wedge was formed fluidly in moments.

The only problem was it pointed in the wrong direction.

Towards Drona.

I looked at Kritavarma, who sounded the charge. It would be useless to break out in the opposite direction alone, so I loaded an arrow and told my chariot to move with the Narayanis. Kritavarma saw me keeping pace with his troops and smiled.

‘Good. I hoped you would see things my way.’

I smiled back at him. Smarmy bastard, I would wrap that tongue around his face one day.

We pushed through the Pandava spears at full tilt, crushing dust and bones in our wake, and made for Drona who was still going strong.

The Panchala infantry blocked our path, a few feet away from him.

I was amazed that the Pandavas didn’t just attack him from the back and end his life. It seemed that they were taking elaborate measures to keep him alive and I soon learned why.

Dhristadyumna came into view on his chariot and called out Drona for a duel.

So, the Pandava strategy was directed by Panchala revenge.

The Panchalas surrounded Drona and goaded him towards Dhristadyumna while we fought hard to reach him.

I was tired. My arms ached as I shot arrows into a never-ending mass of Pandava soldiers. The veins erupted through my arms as I pulled relentlessly. The strain was beginning to tell on the Narayanis too. A chariot warrior next to me kneeled on the floor of his chariot, desperately trying to free the cramps in his fingers, and was caught by a Pandava arrow. Slowly, the Pandava troops began pushing us further from Drona.

He was facing Dhristadyumna now, surrounded by Panchala foot soldiers. It was apparent that they had been given specific instructions by Dhristadyumna not to harm him. I heard him clear through the sound of battle. ‘Satanika, Ketama, Panchalya, Now!’

The three of them surrounded Drona. All of them looked grim.

I was betting on Drona.

My neck snapped back, jarring my vision for a moment. An arrow had hit my helmet, scraping my scalp. I sat down in the chariot and removed my helmet. The Narayanis on my flank, God bless them, protected me while I regained the use of my head. A few moments of rest and I stood up again.

One of Drona’s opponents lay on the ground without a head, his neck oozing blood. Another was slumped over the side of his chariot. The third was in the dust with a clump of arrows in his chest. The only one standing was Dhristadyumna, though just barely. Arrows were stuck in both his arms, which he was trying to remove with great patience.

An arrow smashed into his chest and he stumbled back. The Panchala soldiers stood around horror-struck. They had obviously received instructions not to interfere and were debating the same. I looked at Drona. He stood with a couple of arrows stuck loosely on his breastplate, but otherwise unhurt.

Dhristadyumna picked up a bow and made a pathetic attempt of mounting an arrow. Drona let him load his arrow, and then, with careful aim, shot at his arm again. The arrow missed. But it was enough to set off the Panchalas, who howled and crowded around Drona’s chariot while another lot pulled Dhristadyumna away.

At that moment, Kritavarma saved Drona.

He sounded a charge and we broke through the Panchala troops separating us from Drona and took positions around him.

I stretched my fingers around the bow handle. Two of the three quivers of fifty arrows I carried were empty. I must have killed at least thirty soldiers and it wasn’t even afternoon. The Narayanis, what was left of them, some sixty-odd, formed a circle with Drona in the centre. I joined him and Kritavarma as the Panchalas began closing in.

Drona looked at me and grinned, ‘This is what we call a battle, suta.’ Dust outlined the creases in his face but his eyes were those of a man much younger. Stupid old fool, running us into a trap.

I was too tired to respond. I leaned on my bow as the Narayanis began falling around us.

Kritavarma looked at me, ‘Done so soon? We have to take at least a couple of hundred with us, you know?’

I picked up my bow, heaved an arrow out of its quiver and took a chariot archer in the eye.

There were very few Narayanis left now and the three of us. We moved in closer together as the Panchalas picked off the Narayanis one by one. They were leaving us for the end. We killed as many soldiers as we could. It would soon be our time.

A trumpet sounded to our west.

The Panchalas began to scatter as a horde of elephants trampled their way towards us. Suyodhana was at their head and moments later we were surrounded by friendly faces. Anga troops among them. I spotted Narasimha. His face was a bloody mess and his mood was surly as ever. A good sign.

‘You’re finding new ways to look ugly, Simha.’

He grimaced, ‘Spear caught the cheek. Wish someone would tell the bastards to use ’em only on elephants and not men.’

I would take his arse in the evening for not being able to put our troops in a straight line. But now I just told him to get everyone together and follow me.

Kritavarma pulled up next to me. ‘No Narayanis left here. I’ll be riding with you.’

‘My pleasure. Seen the old man?’

‘Up front with the tusks. I think he’s found Yudhishthira. Not sure though.’

We found Drona among the elephants in a tiny chariot. Kritavarma and I worked our way carefully up to him, staying as far away from the elephants’ feet as we could.

He beamed at us as we approached, ‘Yudhishthira’s right in front. We should have him in no time.’

I peered through dust and elephant limbs. Yudhishthira was on a chariot aiming a javelin surrounded by a small troop of chariots.

Drona signalled to Suyodhana who was directing the elephants’ progress and took his chariot ahead towards Yudhishthira. Kritavarma looked at me and shrugged and followed him. The two of them rushed towards the Pandava chariots. I sighed and told my charioteer to follow. I was going to be a victim of Drona’s recklessness twice in the same day.